Savage Snout: Encounters of the Pot-bellied Kind

5: 911 - Pig

Yes, Pig-pig had an excuse for his poor adult behavior. As a pre-teen piglet, Pig-Pig tried to snuff himself out. Sad as it sounds. He head-butted a bottle of Advil off the bathroom counter while Julie was at work and not only crunched through the child-resistant packaging and swallowed most of the plastic bottle, but also snuffled up all the saccarine-coated ibruprophen tablets inside. When Julie came home, he was lying on his side, wheezing. With an initial scan of the crime scene, she uncovered the saliva-encrusted remnants of the Advil container, and rushed him to the vet, 911-style. He was still a cute piglet at that point, so she didn't need a fork lift truck to move him as would be necessary some years later.

According to the vet, Pig-pig had a 50-50 chance of survival. By this time, Julie was completely in love with her teacup Sausage on Sticks, but still needed a contemplation period before agreeing to the $4000 vet bill, which might – or might not – preserve his life. In the end, she didn't have the heart to give up on him, and her guilt for his hardships was unbearable. In due course, Julie was sitting next to his infant incubator, hand-feeding him chunks of raw tomato, which she declared, through rose-pink eyes and tear-soaked lashes, was his favorite food.

Needless to say, Pig-pig made it through his ordeal alive, but from that day forth, he was a changed pig. The liver damage, caused by the suicide attempt meant he could no longer hold his bladder like a Sausage should. So, while Julie's house began to smell like an ammonia-poisoned pig sty, her and Pig-pig's love for each other overflowed. It was clear that Pig adored Julie. As he got too big to snuggle on her lap, he satisfied himself by lying on the sofa and resting his head on her lap, while she scratched behind his psoriatic ears. (Needless to say, they had the sofa to themselves.) When he got too fat and too heavy to lift himself onto the sofa, he would sit on the floor and put his chin up on her knee.

And of course, it was at this point on his road to obesity that I had the pleasure of meeting him. Pig-pig didn't have the same affection for anyone else that he did for Julie. He tolerated Julie's husband, Pete, accepting him as a fellow pig, but lower on the pig hierarchy. Upon any other person that dared to enter his sty, Pig-pig declared a silent war. Well, not silent. Honks and snorts were abundant. A frozen war. They say pigs are smart, and maybe this pig suffered from PTSD from his near-death experience, but I wondered if she sat under those blankets, calculating the degree of speed and force he would need to muster to detach the closest toe and waited for a prime moment when the toe owner seemed amply distracted. Death by toe, by toe, by toe. If he had it his way, it would be him, Julie, rolling in a trough of tomato chunks forever, alone.

"He's huge," was the observation-in-absence-of-a-compliment I managed.

"He was supposed to be a "teacup" pig," she said, less gushing than on the phone, more resigned.

"Why isn't he a teacup?" He wouldn't even fit in the teacup ride at Disney World. She either hadn't read the small print or she got hustled. Vietnam saw her coming.

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If there's nothing to love, tell me whether pigs have knees. How come evolution left pigs with such skinny gams. Or detail about any historical cases of homicidal pigs.